


Admissions

by fancyasscheeseballs (girlattherockshow)



Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Arrogant brat, Barba can be such a jackass, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlattherockshow/pseuds/fancyasscheeseballs
Summary: Rafael needs to learn that he doesn't know everything, and that sometimes, he can even learn from other people.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Original Character(s), Rafael Barba/Original Female Character(s)
Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597711
Kudos: 22





	Admissions

**Author's Note:**

> Song: "Tiny Voice" by Lexi Walker

“It was good, but it could be better.”

Anna glanced up at him. “Okay, but how?”

Rafael had just finished reading her admissions essay for Fordham Law School, and while he knew that it was good enough to get her in, he would be remiss if he didn’t give his honest opinion. Her wording was precise, the message decent, but something felt off. It was as though the essay was a puzzle and there was one piece, right in the middle, that was missing.

The young woman had come to him four months before, asking for his advice on how to begin a legal career after her sexual assault the previous year. She had been working in the financial industry when she was assaulted by her boss and, after the conclusion of the trial, decided to rebuild her life from the ground up. Rather than default back to her biology degree—one she had not used since graduating college—she wanted to go in an entirely new direction. Rafael was humbled by this; usually, he didn’t get to see the victims after they’d begun to heal. His impact, he thought, ended after he convicted their rapists. But Anna had come to him to tell him that he inspired her to begin a legal career, and so he wanted to do everything he could to encourage her.

Or, at least, that’s how it started.

“Well,” he replied, “obviously your reasons for wanting to attend law school are different than most people’s. But because of that, I feel like there should be more…emotion here. It feels like you’re holding back.”

She tilted her head and chewed her bottom lip. “Okay, I can see what you’re saying.”

“Is it hard for you to talk about?” he asked. “Because if that’s the case—”

“No, it’s not that. I think it’s just that I’ve spent a long time trying to put what happened to me in a box, you know? Like, this is where it goes now, in this corner of my brain. So digging the box out and opening it up is a little difficult.”

He nodded. “I can understand how that would be hard, but remember, there are actual people who read these essays. They want to know who you are. I know that people think admission is by the numbers, and your LSAT score is great. But you need to set yourself apart from all the other applicants with great LSAT scores.”

She leaned over the coffee table. “Right. I get it. Okay. I’ll revise.”

He was continually surprised at how well she took criticism. Most law school applicants tended to be a bit arrogant and didn’t really want to hear that their work wasn’t impeccable. Then again, it was generally type-A perfectionists who wanted to attend law school in the first place; Anna was…not that person. It wasn’t that she was lazy or that she didn’t care enough to try; on the contrary, in their weekly meetings, Rafael had been impressed with how hard she worked to achieve this goal without compromising her easygoing nature or the balance of the rest of her life. She may only have been twenty-four, but she was wiser than half the people he’d gone to school with.

He wanted to end their meeting on a positive note. “That said, I think you stand a very good chance of getting a scholarship. Which I’m sure will help, especially given that you’re just temping right now.”

She stood up, smoothed her linen skirt over her knees, and pulled up her brown suede boots. “Yeah, I’d like to come out of this with as little debt as possible. Especially since…”

“Since what?” he asked, rising to his feet as well.

She looked down, a little sheepishly. “Since I want to do public defense.”

He almost dropped his coffee cup. “Excuse me, what?”

She sighed. “I knew you’d react like this.” She gathered her application materials from the table and packed them into her messenger bag.

“I mean, how did you expect me to react?” he asked. “After everything you’ve been through, after telling me that I inspired you to even go to law school—how could you want to do what John Buchanan and Rita Calhoun do?”

“Do you really think I would turn out like either of them?” she asked, a bit defensively. “I have no desire to be Buchanan!”

He set his cup down on his desk and put squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Look, I know that we’re all supposed to say that the justice system only works when criminals are afforded a defense, and that the Constitution says they’re entitled to one, but I just—”

“Rafael, I understand that you don’t like this. I get it. You’ve made it perfectly clear. But it’s my life.”

“And it’s my time!” he snapped. “I’ve been laboring under the impression that you wanted to do what I do. At least, that’s the impression you gave me, since all we’ve discussed about the practice of law is from the perspective of a prosecutor.”

She folded her arms and stepped closer to him. “Well,” she said, “if having your help is conditional upon doing what you want me to do, then I’d just as soon thank you for your time and try not to waste any more of mine.”

He was trying very hard to be annoyed, but he couldn’t help himself. “You do realize you just quoted a Sara Bareilles song?”

It took her a second to process what he had just said. “Wait…did you really just admit that you, Rafael Barba, big, bad prosecutor, listen to Sara Bareilles?”

“I guess we’re both full of surprises.”

She sighed, grateful for the tension breaking but also not done with the conversation. “Look, I know you don’t get it.” She put a hand on his arm. “I understand that you don’t get how anyone would want to be a defense attorney—”

“It’s not that I don’t understand why people do it. It’s that I don’t understand why _you_ want to do it.”

“I want to do it because there are people like Buchanan out there. You’re such a good prosecutor, Rafael. And the reason you’re good is because you’re a good person. You want to do the right thing. And so do I. The defense world needs people like you, but if they can’t have you, then maybe I can”—she paused, taking a breath—“maybe I can be a substitute. Like I said, I know you don’t understand it. And I’d love your approval. But I don’t need your absolution, because I’m not doing anything wrong.”

He found himself at a loss for words. Never had he considered the idea that good people might want to negate the impact of defense attorneys like Buchanan. Maybe he had just come into contact with too many terrible defense attorneys. Or maybe he had just been a prosecutor for so long that he assumed all defense attorneys were terrible. But he couldn’t imagine ever thinking that about Anna.

In fact, all he was thinking about Anna at that moment was that her hand was still on his arm.

She looked down and noticed the same thing. She didn’t even remember putting it there. But she also didn’t see him pulling away. She moved a little closer, so that there was only an inch or two of space between them. The world blurred a little at the edges.

“Anna…” he whispered.

She knew that he was doing her a favor by helping her. He certainly had better things to do with his time than spend it with a victim who he’d already done so much for. But she also wasn’t willing to sacrifice her goals just to earn his approval—or, she thought, his affection. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “I hope someday you can understand,” she said, and in a flash of linen and suede, she was gone.

* * *

Anna canceled their next meeting. Rafael wasn’t surprised, but he found himself disappointed. Not because she did something wrong, but because he hadn’t realized how much he looked forward to spending time with her until suddenly, he wasn’t anymore. Every time he saw a flash of blonde hair outside his office door or in his apartment hallway, his heart seemed to stop. Once or twice, he’d started to text her, but couldn’t really figure out what to say. It wasn’t that they had ended their last encounter on a bad note; it was more that he didn’t know whether she expected an apology and didn’t know what to say to find out.

So, he just didn’t say anything.

A week later, he got home from work more exhausted than usual. He had just finished a particularly gray case involving a teenage boy who had likely pressured a teenage girl into rounding third base, but the girl’s parents seemed more interested in prosecuting than she did. He hated these cases, because it wasn’t as easy for him to dislike the perp. It wasn’t that he sympathized; he couldn’t imagine pushing a woman into _anything_ and would never understand how a man could get pleasure from sex with someone who wasn’t entirely into it. But he also felt like he was contributing to the girl’s pain—she seemed more embarrassed by the legal proceedings than traumatized by the incident itself.

On days like this, what he loved doing most was coming home, ordering takeout, and—although he would never let anyone else know it—watching those ridiculous house-flipping shows on HGTV. Even though lots of people would recommend just burning these old, busted houses to the ground, there were always people willing to try to turn them into something worthwhile. He liked watching things rebuilt from the ground up. It was while he was watching one of those shows that the realization dawned on him: that’s exactly what Anna was trying to do with defense work. She couldn’t do it all, of course; there would always be houses that _should_ be left to rot. But she wanted to try to flip what she could.

And he’d been telling her to burn it all down. And for what? His ego? To earn his respect? Just today, he had been doubting himself for even prosecuting the case against that boy, wondering if it was really a rape or whether the girl’s parents just wanted to believe it was. Was his side of the law really above reproach?

He opened his laptop to send her an email. He wanted to tell her something, but it was too much to text. And that was when he saw it: the subject read, “Revised Essay. For Your Eyes Only.”

So he started to read.

Most of the essay was the same as it was when he first read it. But the last few paragraphs were new and were everything he had hoped she would revise about it.

> _It’s probably common for applicants to say that they’ve wanted to go to law school since they were kids. And most people probably say it’s because they want to save the world, do good, protect people, pursue justice. They probably say that they’ve been inspired by another lawyer or that they see the good the law does for people. Those are all valid reasons, and I respect people for them._
> 
> _For me, it’s really quite simple. I want to be a lawyer because I see the damage the law can do. I’ve been torn down on a witness stand by an attorney who had no compunction about calling me a slut. I realize that this attorney would say he was zealously defending his client, and I’m sure he believes that. But I think there are ways you can defend a client while also respecting the dignity of other humans—even the humans accusing your client of heinous crimes. I think there are better ways to practice law, and I want to find out what they are and pursue them._
> 
> _I want people to realize that defense attorneys are not the monsters portrayed on television. I want to be a defense attorney that prosecutors can respect. I want to practice law in a way that makes people able to understand why I decided to practice criminal defense. If I can achieve that, if I can make a believer out of the most cynical, stubborn people who think there is no such thing as a defense attorney who is both good at their job and also good at being a human, then I will consider myself a success. I hope that Fordham will allow me to achieve that goal._

The reply he sent was short and to the point, as he always was.

> _Anna,_
> 
> _Whether or not you attend law school, you’ve made a believer out of this cynical, stubborn old man. I’m sorry to have tried to take away that dream._
> 
> _-Rafael_

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on his door. He expected it to be the Thai food he’d ordered. But when he opened the door, something much better awaited him on the other side.

Anna looked flustered for the first time since they’d started seeing each other regularly. “I know I kissed you before,” she said, “but I didn’t do it right. Can I try again?”

He pulled her in by her hand and pressed her to his chest. “It was good, but it could be better,” he replied, just before his lips met hers.


End file.
